Joshua Iliffe, 28

He had that elusive quality: presence. When he entered a room people noticed. When he died, everyone noticed too; the shock reverberated around the globe.

He was superbly fit, with an infectious smile and a career in the money market - everything to live for and so much ahead of him.

That was the Josh Iliffe known to his sporting buddies, and to friends around the Sydney suburb of Kensington, where he shared a flat with fellow Coogee Dolphin Clint Thompson.

In their townhouse at Bowral, not that far from the Bradman Oval, Peter and Yvonne Iliffe remember the youngest of their three children. Their love is laced with the pangs of loss.

Josh grew up surfing Sydney's northern beaches. He played rugby league with the Eastern Suburbs club before a friend introduced him to the Dolphins. From a young age, Josh learnt to play defence.

"Peter used to give him 20 cents a tackle as a young boy," Yvonne Iliffe says, smiling. Yes, Peter says, it was to teach Josh from the outset that the game required players who would take responsibility.

But it is Josh's "charisma" to which they frequently return. He was always a fun person, they say: you would know when he had entered the room, because he had a certain presence. And if it was a large gathering, Josh would move from one conversation to another.

After graduating in economics from Sydney University, Josh Iliffe worked in his father's business before becoming a futures trader. A contact at Barclays Capital, James Clarke, had been trying to lure Josh to the company's Singapore office. Josh was thinking about the offer, Peter Iliffe says.

After the Bali bombing, Clarke wrote that Josh Iliffe's death had sent ripples through the world's financial industry.

"The massive expression of grief, from Sydney to London, from Hong Kong to New York, has demonstrated the large impression that Josh made on the hearts of those who had the pleasure of knowing him. Although I am not a particularly religious person, I believe there is a better place and he has certainly earned his spot there," Clarke wrote.

Yvonne Iliffe says she was "worried something would happen" to Josh when he told the family about the Bali trip. Serendipitously, Josh and his siblings - Trent, 36, and Nicholle, 34 - had been at their parents' Bowral home the weekend before he left.

Josh had been showing off his taut stomach muscles and athletic body, and was a happy man.